Imperfect Rebel (39 page)

His jeans rode low on his lean hips, and he hadn't bothered donning his dirty shirt, so she could admire all that tanned, muscled leanness in the light of day. "Hi," she said a trifle warily since he didn't smile back.

He rested one knee on the bed as he adjusted the tray in the middle of the mattress as if it were the most important task in his life right now.

He was supposed to be creating a screenplay, not babysitting her.

She sat up, pulling the sheet with her. She'd let too many fantasies dance through her head. The world had gone away last night, but it was back full force this morning. "If you start yelling, I'll hurl coffee at you," she warned.

He smiled then, a curling of one corner of his mouth and not the full white-toothed grin that could bring her to her knees. "That's the Cleo I know and love. Eat something. It improves your humor."

Satisfied the tray was stable, he sat cross-legged on the other side of it and drank deeply of his mug of coffee.

She watched the muscles of his throat work as he swallowed and wondered what it would be like to share this intimacy with a man on a daily basis. She'd never known security in her life. She longed for it, but not at the sacrifice of other lives.

She sipped her coffee and nibbled at a slice of bacon as she waited to hear whatever wonders swirled in his brain now. The way his mind worked excited her as much as the way his body felt inside hers. She thought that might be a lethal combination.

"Carbohydrates." He pointed at the toast. "Raise the blood sugar."

Obediently, she tore off a corner of buttered toast. She didn't have to be told to eat, but if it satisfied his need to command, fine by her.

"You don't have to baby me," she said, wiping the butter from her lips with the back of her hand. "I'm perfectly capable of facing the consequences on my own. You need to be working."

"I'll work when I'm ready." Stubbornly, he wrapped a fried egg and a piece of bacon into a slice of toast and bit into it.

"All right, then remind me of the order of today's events. Do I report to the sheriff's office, the courthouse, or call a real estate agent to sell everything I own so I can slip away in the middle of the night?"

"We'll let them figure it out when they're ready. Our friend Amos is keeping the law busy for now." He sipped his coffee, then eyed her askance. "Unless you have some place to go, I wouldn't recommend the real estate company just yet."

Her stomach tightened, and she looked away. "I'm not rich. I need to work, and I don't imagine business will be booming anytime soon. I can't think of too many places that will accept a crazy ex-felon with open arms."

"You'd be surprised." He didn't sound concerned. "I think we need to concentrate on doing something about the kids."

Well, at least that gave her something positive to think about. "Social Services has them, I assume?"

"Gene was remanded into their care, yeah. Kismet's holding out, but she can't do it for long. I didn't connect with their caseworker yesterday. Guess that's a starting place."

She nodded. His tension upped her level of anxiety. "I can handle that, if you have some way of reaching Kismet. I don't know if the caseworker will let me see them once they're in custody."

"Probably best if you don't until the law straightens out Gene's story. He's got to be pretty confused by now."

"I'm not blaming him for whatever he said. He didn't know what would happen, and he didn't want his mother going to jail."

Jared nodded and looked past her to the window. "I'm going to ask the lawyer if I can adopt them. It's a long shot, but I can't abandon them to the system you described."

If she'd doubted what she felt about this man before, she didn't any longer. She wouldn't apply fancy names to the emotion welling inside her and threatening to spill over into tears, but she didn't think she'd ever feel this way again, not with any other man. She wouldn't destroy him by telling him that, though.

"Even should their mother relinquish her rights, that's asking a lot," she said cautiously. "You don't know anything about raising kids, and you've got the kind of life that doesn't adapt well to teenagers."

"I know. I've been giving it some thought, but I figure I'll take this one step at a time."

The look he gave her curled her toes. She didn't want to know the words behind that look. She couldn't handle them right now. "So I'm supposed to sit here and wait to see if the law comes to haul me off in chains and leave the kids up to you?"

"Yep." He finished his coffee. "You had your day in the sun. Now it's my turn."

Blithely, he unfolded from the bed and wandered off. Cleo couldn't decide whether his attitude was worth getting angry over. He was depressingly right, and she couldn't think of any immediate solution.

Finishing her food, she heard him go out to the car to find his duffel, listened to him shower, and waited anxiously until he returned to the doorway. She didn't possess enough shyness to hide her nakedness from a man who'd seen her stripped to the soul. She waited.

"I'm going out. Don't leave. I'll call you to see what you've found out from Social Services after I leave the lawyer's office."

"All right." She'd learned a modicum of cautiousness over the years. She used it wisely now. One temper tantrum a decade was enough for her. Until yesterday, she hadn't thrown a proper fit since the time her ex had knocked her against the wall, and she'd run away across the country. She really didn't want to repeat the experience.

"I'll be back," Jared reminded her, before striding off.

She believed him this time. Picking up the newspaper he'd left beside the breakfast tray, she turned to the comics.

The teenage nerd in
Scapegrace
attending a party where marijuana was being smoked wasn't funny, even if the kid fell into a pool and drowned a teddy bear in his frantic effort to escape. The final panel showed emergency services arriving to rescue him while all his socialite friends fled.

If Jared was putting himself in the place of his teenage character, the symbolism was too painful to consider, even if the strip had been drawn weeks ago.

Chapter 32

"They done tole me not to say nuthin' to nobody." Gene crossed his arms and stuck out a defiant lip.

With Liz's permission, Jared had cornered the boy at school. The counselor had sacrificed her office so they could speak privately.

"You send Cleo up the river, and I'm coming after your scrawny hide with my belt," Jared warned. "She understands, but I won't. You can lie to the law and lie to yourself but you can't lie to me. Cleo didn't give you those drugs. I figure Lonnie the Pervert for that one. What do you think will happen if he gets out before Cleo does? Who do you want to see out there on the streets with Kismet, Cleo or the Perv?"

"Ain't no difference to me," Gene responded sullenly. "They busted me, and I'm runnin' before they put me behind any bars."

Jared rubbed his hand through his hair and tried to put this in terminology a terrified kid could understand. "I've hired the best lawyer in the state. He says even if you
knowingly
possessed drugs with intent to sell, they can't put you behind bars for a first offense. They're hassling you if they say otherwise."

Buoyed by the first sign of interest the boy had shown, Jared shoved the door of hope open a little wider. "If a lawyer can prove you didn't know you were carrying an illegal substance, you'll walk. You'll need Cleo's cooperation as a character witness, and mine, possibly, but he thinks he can pull it off if you tell him the truth."

He waited tensely as the boy pondered the pros and cons from his warped perspective. The truth would incriminate either his mother or his mother's boyfriend, undoubtedly. It was tough asking a kid to throw his mother in jail. Clenching his hands into fists and trying not to throttle the kid, Jared gave him time to think.

Gene looked up at him through narrowed lashes. "What happens to me and Kis if I tell the truth? Cleo ain't gonna let me stay with her anymore."

"Cleo would take you both in a minute if the caseworkers would let her, but I'm going to be honest with you. It doesn't look as if they will. I'm trying my best to get you and Kismet a good place to stay, but you'll have to trust me on that one."

"Kis ain't gonna like it in that home." Gene crossed his arms so tightly his shoulders drew inward. "She gonna lose it if they make her stay."

Jared wanted to hug those sturdy shoulders and tell the kid he'd make all his troubles go away, but the lawyer had told him already that as a single man, he didn't have a chance in hell of adopting them, even if Linda signed her rights away. And marrying a convicted felon would demolish all hope. He was still furious and looking for a way out, but he couldn't do everything at once. He needed Cleo's name cleared first.

He'd already called his agent and told him to forget the screenplay. He could hear George's screams of rage and despair still, but Cleo's cries were more powerful, and these kids more important. So, if George didn't want his other idea, he'd wash dishes for a living. He had no business going to Hollywood when he'd finally found a place where he was needed, and where he needed to be.

"Kismet will like it less if Lonnie comes after her," he told Gene. "We need to put him away for a long time. Then we'll have time to figure out what to do. Cleo will help. I can promise that much. But you've got to help her first."

Gene struggled a little more, wiping anxiously at moisture in his eyes and fidgeting, looking away from Jared to the crowded bulletin board in the counselor's office. "What about Mama?"

Well, here it was, sink or swim time. "She needs to get some help. She can't fight that stuff on her own anymore, do you understand?"

"I guess." Gene continued staring at the bulletin board.

Jared knew he understood. The boy had grown up far too early. It was even worse that he had to worry about his mother and older sister when they should be looking after him. Still, with the right support, he could make it in life. Obstacles could be scaled.

"If she gets clean, they'll probably let her go in a few months. But they can send Cleo up for years. Is that fair?"

"No," the boy whispered.

He'd pushed hard enough for now. Finally giving in to the urge, Jared hugged him. "I'm trusting you to do what's right. Now, you'll have to trust me to return the favor, okay?"

The boy nodded uncertainly. He'd never been given any reason to trust. Jared understood that. He could only hope the kid's innate character would surface and give him strength.

Cleo had the same problem with trust. That she had finally given in and trusted him to handle this gave him reason to hope.

"I'll tell Cleo you're looking good." Jared walked out, leaving Gene to talk to the school counselor or not, as he wished.

Cleo had looked at him with such hero worship in her normally cynical eyes, she had him believing he could leap tall buildings. Better yet, she had him believing what
he
wanted to do was more important than what others wanted him to do. His family and his agent and everyone else in his former life would react in horror at his abandoning his lucrative film contract to work on an experimental project that might never sell. Cleo would simply tell him to do what he thought best. She accepted that he had enough sense and intelligence to do what was best for him—and for her, although he didn't think she realized her part in his plans yet.

Feeling two tons lighter for being rid of a screenplay that would have stunk as badly as the television show once the committee of rewriters and producers sucked the blood out of it, Jared swung the Jeep into traffic and headed out to pick up Kismet. He wouldn't try using e-mail to persuade her that a group home was safe. That would require a personal visit. She hadn't said where she was hiding, but he was fairly confident she was on the island, dividing time between unoccupied houses. He hadn't received e-mail from her since Cleo returned home, which meant she was staying somewhere without electricity or phone. That pretty much narrowed it to her mother's or the wrecked beach house.

First, though, he'd better visit Marta. Cleo's livelihood might be the only one they had if his strip syndication bellied up. Grinning at the thought of relying on someone else for support, Jared swung down the usually empty street where the hardware store was located.